Landing humans on the moon was just a dream when UCF was founded in 1963. But we dared to believe — developing the talent and inventing the technologies to make it reality. That same spirit still drives us today.

We are America’s Space University. And we celebrate UCF Space Week to honor our origin as we dare to build what’s next.

Where Global Leaders Unite to Forge the Future of Space

Seconds after NASA’s Orion capsule splashed into the Pacific Ocean, white spray rose around the scorched spacecraft. Telemetry streamed from Houston to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Inside the Test Launch Control Center thousands of miles from the splashdown, Joseph Hoayun ’22 ’26MSEM watched his monitor intently. His heart pounded as he tracked live data from the crew module uprighting system, a critical safety mechanism he had spent months testing and analyzing.

As five vibrant orange balloons inflated and lifted the capsule upright in the rolling sea, Hoayun’s shoulders finally dropped. Months of work gave way to pride. Orion was home. Mission accomplished.

“That capsule was my baby,” says Hoayun, a spacecraft propulsion test engineer at Lockheed Martin, NASA’s prime contractor for the Orion spacecraft used in the crewed Artemis II mission. “We were just freaking out — everything felt like it was moving in slow motion. It felt like hours from the time Orion entered our atmosphere until the astronauts safely emerged from the spacecraft.”

While the world celebrated the first crewed lunar flyby in more than half a century, Hoayun’s attention soon turned to the next mission. As NASA prepares to accelerate its launch schedule from one Artemis mission every two years to an aggressive eight-month cycle, the pressure on test engineering is mounting. To keep pace, his division is expanding from 70 to more than 100 personnel.

High-Pressure Stakes

Hoayun supports the night shift in an operation that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week at Kennedy Space Center. On any given evening, he might run a proof and leak test on an Orion service module, pressurizing flight propellant tanks to hundreds of pounds per square inch to verify structural integrity under extreme stress.

“People think you build one rocket at a time, but right now we have Artemis III, IV and V all in our building being tested in parallel by different teams,” Hoayun says.

As leader of his division’s Operational Excellence Team, he applies Six Sigma methods to improve tracking, refine testing workflows and eliminate waste. He estimates his team has saved Lockheed Martin hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“We do hundreds of distinct tests for each spacecraft cycle to ensure that all engines, electrical components, mechanical units and control systems work cleanly before they leave Earth,” he says.

Ensuring spacecraft reliability requires precision and strict safety protocols, including a 70-foot evacuation radius during high-threshold testing to protect personnel from lethal hazards. A single miscalculation could destroy a $2 billion spacecraft or trigger a catastrophic explosion.

Hoayun credits his UCF bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and master’s degree in engineering management through the university’s College of Engineering and Computer Science with giving him the tools to thrive in these high-pressure environments. For his senior design project, he fondly recalls building and successfully flying a distributed electric propulsion aircraft. The complex engineering challenge required the same collaborative problem-solving he now relies on at Lockheed Martin.

But long before stepping onto UCF’s campus, Hoayun discovered his passion for solving problems. As a child, he watched Apollo 13 and was captivated by the scene in which engineers race against the clock to build a makeshift carbon dioxide filter.

“Watching them solve a life-or-death engineering problem in real time made me say, ‘I want to be the guy in the control room doing rapid problem-solving,’ ” he says.

Read Him Like a Book

Hoayun’s dad, a science teacher at Orlando’s Corner Lake Middle School, recognized his son’s fascination with space early. Instead of traditional bedtime stories like Goodnight Moon, his father read him school textbooks or set up kitchen experiments to explain thermodynamics and chemistry. When Hoayun reached middle school, he landed right in his dad’s honors class.

“Getting to touch a spacecraft and see your work blast into orbit every day is a full-circle blessing.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily recommend having your dad as your teacher,” Hoayun says with a chuckle. “He loved using me as the class guinea pig for demonstrations, but I couldn’t complain — he was my ride home!”

After submitting about 400 job applications, Hoayun landed his dream job. In a few years, he says he may return to UCF to pursue a doctorate. But for now, at just 26, he’s focused on preparing the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis III mission.

His work supports preparations for the precise maneuvers needed to bring Orion and commercial lunar landers together in orbit, helping pave the way for astronauts to return to the moon’s surface.

“Each mission is progressively more complex and difficult,” Hoayun says. “But that means you never get bored. Getting to touch a spacecraft and see your work blast into orbit every day is a full-circle blessing.”

They proclaimed there is no better place than UCF, the closest medical school to Kennedy Space Center, to create a new frontier in healthcare as humans prepare for longer missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.

“You are in a global destination for medical innovation,” Michal Masternak told participants in the Star Nona 2026 event in Lake Nona’s Medical City. An anti-aging and cancer researcher at the UCF College of Medicine, Masternak organized the event as part of the Lake Nona Research Council, which is focused on encouraging interdisciplinary scientific partnerships between industry, academia and healthcare.

Space medicine is one of the council’s priorities. Deep space travel and the commercialization of space bring unique health challenges that science is just beginning to explore. The College of Medicine’s focuses on how factors such as microgravity, radiation and isolation impact the human body in space and how that knowledge can drive innovation into diagnostics, treatment and disease prevention for patients on Earth.

Former NASA Administrator and U.S. Senator Bill Nelson told attendees the Artemis voyage’s return to the moon should inspire space medicine experts to make new discoveries.

“We’re in a whole new era, an exciting era, of space exploration that makes this time so special,” Nelson said.

Star Nona’s goal was to bring together experts to understand current research on the health impacts of space travel and what challenges need to be addressed as more professional and commercial space travelers go to the moon and beyond.

The Physical Challenges of Space Flight

Former NASA astronaut Robert Curbeam holds the record for most spacewalks on a single mission. He described how the body feels during launch and splashdown when G-forces are so strong you must remind yourself to breathe. He presented with his former NASA flight surgeon, Smith Johnson, now a faculty member at UCF’s new Center for Aerospace and Extreme Environments Medicine (CASEEM). The two discussed the important relationship between physicians and space travelers before, during and after a mission.

“I loved being an astronaut and flying space shuttles,” Curbeam says. “The only problem with space travel is that not a lot of people get to do it.”

Your Brain Actually Shifts in Space

Living in space causes the body’s fluids to move up to the head and brain. But symptoms of that condition do more than cause puffy faces. Space travel actually causes the brain to shift. Jogi Pattisapu, of the Hydrocephalus and Neuroscience Institute, said as astronauts go to Mars for years-long missions and settle on the moon, scientists will have to understand how living in space affects brain function and create predictive tests and preventative measures. Eye health will be key, as fluid buildup has caused spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS) in 70% of astronauts on the International Space Station, leading to farsightedness, optic nerve swelling and eyeball flattening.

“What are we going to do if the pilot goes blind 210 million miles from Earth?” he said.

Team Dynamics in Space

Interpersonal communication is key to any team’s success, but how do relationships change for crews in confined spaces and face additional challenges such as sleep deprivation, isolation and differences in rank and roles. Shawn Burke and Stephen Fiore from UCF’s Institute for Simulation and Training have researched team dynamics in space to understand and prevent collaboration failures that can impact mission success.

Their research has also identified the formal and informal roles crew members play in encouraging positive social interactions and teamwork, especially in long-term missions. Missions to Mars may take up to 36 months and include 20-minute communications delays to and from Mission Control. Team dynamics will impact performance, mental health and affect, Burke said, because “you’re stuck with the people you have.”

Conducting Medical Research in Microgravity: Everything’s Upside Down

The weightlessness of space provides a unique research environment for new discoveries in areas including nutrient production, waste treatment, crystallization and biomanufacturing, said Alain Berinstain, director of the Florida Space Institute at UCF.

“Terrestrially, whenever space can make a difference, it’s a great economic driver,” he said.

In space, air doesn’t slow down processes, he explained, so experiments that involve weight, separation, sedimentation, fluid flow and buoyancy change. His advice to researchers considering space as a lab?

“Turn your experiment upside down. Does it still work? If the answer is no, you have a lot of work to do.”

The mission will include multiple health studies on the four astronauts to determine how radiation, microgravity, isolation and other factors impact their physical health, mind and behavior — crucial information that will help pave the way for future lunar surface missions and develop our understanding about humans’ deep space capabilities.

Thanks to new technology and modern medicine, researchers have better ways to understand the impact of space flight on human health.

“Artemis II is both a historic and biomedically important mission,” says  Emmanuel Urquieta, the UCF College of Medicine’s vice chair for aerospace medicine and director of the university’s new Center for Aerospace and Extreme Environments Medicine (CASEEM).

“For the first time since Apollo 17, humans will travel beyond the Earth’s magnetic field. That matters enormously from a research perspective, because now we have technology to thoroughly understand the health impact of embarking into deep space. The knowledge gained from Artemis II will help shape the future of safe human space exploration and drive innovations that can benefit medicine here on Earth and help us start preparing us for a mission to Mars.”

The Space Coast’s College of Medicine

As the closest medical school to the Kennedy Space Center, UCF’s College of Medicine is charting a new frontier in healthcare as humans prepare for longer missions to the moon and Mars, and commercial space flights take more civilians into space.

The goal: explore how factors such as microgravity, radiation and isolation impact the human body in space and how that knowledge can drive innovation into diagnostics, treatment and disease prevention on Earth.

To further those efforts, UCF’s CASEEM includes faculty experts in medicine, engineering, computer science, psychology, arts and educational leadership. This interdisciplinary group will work together to research and develop new technologies for keeping space travelers healthy, as well as soldiers on military missions, deep sea explorers and mountain climbers.

What Lies Ahead for Artemis II’s Astronauts

• Understanding Radiation Exposure Effects

Traveling to the moon — which humans haven’t returned to since 1972 — means astronauts will go beyond Earth’s Van Allen belts, which protect humans from cosmic radiation and solar storms. Space travelers to the International Space Station stay within Earth’s magnetic field. During their 10-day mission, Artemis II is anticipated to break Apollo 13’s record (248,655 miles) for the farthest distance humans have traveled from Earth.

Fifty years ago, researchers could do little more than measure radiation. This time will be different, says UCF’s William “Ed” Powers, chief medical officer of CASEEM and the former chief of NASA’s Medical Operations branch where he was a primary medical support physician for six shuttle missions.

“Medical knowledge, technology and the ability to diagnose disease have advanced significantly since then,” he says.

Physicians and scientists will be able to determine how radiation impacts cells, organs, blood proteins and other molecular functions.

Artemis crew members will carry dosimeters in their pockets that measure radiation exposure in real time. Monitors inside the Orion spacecraft will also gather radiation information throughout the flight for future analysis.

An astronaut suffering a medical condition in space is always a concern, but deep space travel brings additional challenges, Powers explains. While astronauts on the International Space Station can be returned to Earth in about a day, as happened recently when a crew member became ill, returning from the moon may take several days or more.

“None of the four astronauts on this flight is a physician,” Powers says. “And a space capsule certainly doesn’t have the same equipment you’d have in a hospital emergency room.”

• Does Space Flight Reduce Immunity?

Previous research has shown that spaceflight missions alter the and reactivate dormant viruses in the human body. As part of the Artemis II mission, NASA will conduct an AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response) experiment that will investigate how deep space impacts specific cells and tissues as well as some vital bodily functions including immune system responses.

For this experiment, NASA-funded scientists created “organ-on-a-chip” devices that contain each astronaut’s bone marrow cells. This technology allows scientists to examine molecular changes and cell function.

“With this technology we can see how the body responds to stimuli across the whole mission,” says Jennifer Fogarty, CASEEM’s chief scientist who came to UCF after serving as chief scientist for NASA’s Human Research Program. “This capability will help us map the body’s molecular changes with tissue/organ function and much better predictive capabilities.”

As the “organ-on-a-chip” technology advances and proves accurate, it will allow NASA physicians to provide personalized and proactive medicine to astronauts because they will be able to predict a crew member’s biological response to space flight. Such technology could be used before NASA sends an actual crew to Mars. The space agency could place the crew’s personalized chips on unmanned flights to the Red Planet to better understand the potential health risks for each individual.

“It’s basically sending small versions of astronauts to Mars before we send astronauts to Mars,” Fogarty says.

• Teamwork and Behavior

Selecting an astronaut crew that will perform well under the stresses of space flight is always a top NASA priority. But deep space missions present additional personnel challenges, including communication delays, increased isolation and resource constraints.

Astronauts on moon and Mars missions also must live in a capsule that is significantly smaller than the International Space Station, highlighting the need for crews to work together seamlessly and be able to manage any conflicts.

The Artemis flight will conduct an experiment called ARCHeR (Artemis Research for Crew Health and Readiness) that will evaluate how astronauts perform individually and as a team during the mission.

They will wear sleep and movement monitors before, during and after the mission to evaluate their cognition and team dynamics.

“You watch the astronauts on TV, and it looks so easy,” Fogarty says. “But human performance is critical in space. You have multiple duties to conduct and you’re always pushing operations. So we need to understand how the team performs, their reserve and resilience. The mission itself is the experiment.”

Star Nona 2026

UCF’s leading space medicine experts, valued strategic partners and an astronaut who holds NASA’s record for spacewalks will gather April 10 in Lake Nona’s Medical City to discuss how they can work together to keep space travelers healthy and use that research to create groundbreaking clinical innovations on Earth.

The “Star Nona 2026” event is led by the Lake Nona Research Council, which is focused on encouraging interdisciplinary scientific partnerships between industry, academia and healthcare.

The council includes physicians and researchers from UCF, Orlando Health, AdventHealth, the Florida Space Institute, the Orlando VA Medical Center, Nemours Children’s Health, business and industry.

For more information, including how to register for the event, visit www.ucf.edu/news/progressing-the-final-frontier-of-medicine-space.

As a 67-year-old retiree, Amy Lendian wants you to know it’s never too late. Never too late to start over; to go for your dream career; to earn your college degree.

When the UCF Online history student assumes her spot at the console at Kennedy Space Center to lead the facility systems engineers for the upcoming historic Artemis II launch, that affirmation will echo within her once more.

“I always believed in myself and felt that I could do this,” she says. “It really is never too late.”

Turning a Setback Into a Comeback

Lendian spent the majority of her adult life building her career as a fire protection engineer, helping design sprinkler systems and other fire safety infrastructure.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened. The construction industry came to a screeching halt. In her 60s, she suddenly faced unemployment.

“I thought, ‘Who is going to want to hire me in my 60s?’ ” she says. “But I made it my job to find a job. And not just any job. I set out for my dream job in the aerospace industry.”

She logged in every day on her home computer to research job listings, dressed as if she was headed to an office. She sought career counseling. She joined virtual seminars to learn new software and online tools she knew she’d need to master if she wanted to break into the field. She learned how to rework her resume to leverage her relevant skills.

Her strategy and persistence paid off. She got a call back for a fire protection systems engineer position on base at Kennedy Space Center.

Finding Her Place in Space

On her first day at KSC, she attended a briefing where they discussed etiquette while serving on the console. She says it took her a moment to process what she was hearing.

“I stayed up to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. I have a photo of myself as a kid standing in front of an Apollo rocket. And you’re saying you want me to be on the console during a launch?!” she says. “I thought, ‘I’m here. I arrived.’ ”

Lendian served on the console for the Artemis I launch in November 2022.

Although she has since retired from her formal position with KSC and moved to Chicago, she is still employed as a part-time consultant and will be there again for Artemis II managing the fire protection systems on the launchpad.

Finishing What She Started

Her late-stage career change inspired her to consider other dreams she had yet to realize. A big one has been nearly 50 years in the making.

Lendian was 19 years old when she attempted college the first time. She enrolled in the University of South Florida’s electrical engineering program in the late 1970s. But after three years, she stopped her studies because she got married and needed to support her new family.

In 2021, she decided to resuscitate her dream of a college degree. She transferred her old credits into the program at Eastern Florida State College, earned her associate’s degree and looked to enroll in one of ɫ����’s degree programs so she could manage school with her full-time job.

The history degree she is working toward is affiliated with one of the top online institutions. UCF ranks No. 6 for Online Bachelor’s Programs nationally according to the U.S. News & World Report.

“I want that bachelor’s degree,” Lendian says. “I am doing this for me. I am going to do something that I love (history). And I am going to graduate.”

UCF’s expertise will help drive the success of DUSTER, a payload designed specifically to capture and measure dust behavior during spacecraft and human operations on the moon. Lunar Outpost’s Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover will support NASA’s DUSTER (Dust and plaSma environmenT survEyoR) investigation, selected for development through the Artemis IV Deployed Instruments program. The instruments will be built at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU Boulder.

DUSTER represents the best opportunity to date to evaluate the theory on the physics of dust erosion, with implications for the activities being planned on the moon’s surface. The Artemis IV mission is due to launch in 2028.

Testing Rocket Exhaust and Dust Erosion

This theory introduces a fundamentally new understanding of the behavior of gas in the boundary layer, the thin region where rocket exhaust meets the moon’s surface. This new physics shows how the gas flow in that layer lifts dust grains —something no previous model could adequately explain. Before this breakthrough, NASA lacked a method to reliably predict how much lunar dust erosion a landing or departing spacecraft would generate, and therefore could not fully estimate how much sandblasting damage would occur to hardware on the moon.

However, several key parameters in this new model cannot be measured accurately using existing lunar data or Earth-based experiments. On Earth, large-scale testing is limited: rocket exhaust cannot be blasted into a vacuum chamber without destroying the vacuum, and gravity cannot be reduced to lunar levels for the necessary full-scale trials.

DUSTER will change that. By collecting data during actual Starship Human Landing System operations on the moon, DUSTER will allow scientists to measure these long-elusive parameters directly in the lunar environment — providing the highest-fidelity test yet of Metzger’s theory.

“One of DUSTER’s capabilities is measuring the dust blown by rocket exhaust as the Starship Human Landing System lifts off and departs from the moon,” Metzger says.

In this project, University of Colorado Boulder Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics senior researcher Xu Wang, who serves as principal investigator, will analyze upstream plasma conditions. UCF will interpret measurements of dust ejected during the Human Landing System liftoff.

“UCF brings to this project its expertise in the science of how rocket exhaust blows soil and dust.” — Phil Metzger ’00MS ’05PhD, UCF planetary scientist

“UCF brings to this project its expertise in the science of how rocket exhaust blows soil and dust,” says Metzger.

The findings generated by DUSTER will directly inform NASA’s long-term plans for sustained lunar operations, providing critical insights to protect habitats, instruments, and other assets as human presence on the moon grows. As NASA plans to deliver major infrastructure to the lunar surface, Artemis IV presents a new opportunity to address this outstanding engineering challenge of lunar exploration.

Jimenez-Chavez answers his phone from a park bench and immediately puts the mind at ease.

“I’m just a normal guy,” he says. “I happen to find research exciting. It feels good to make any kind of breakthrough. I can’t get enough of it.”

The accomplishments of this “normal guy” read like those from someone looking back on a 25-year career when in fact Jimenez-Chavez is a master’s student in biomedical sciences at UCF. He’s only 26. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences four years ago and decided instead of going to medical school he would first spend time exploring everything he’s heard about since childhood: science, space and medicine.

It becomes clear that something stronger than worldly success is driving this guy.

“Oh, I should tell you I’m also a music producer,” Jimenez-Chavez says. “Music is another process that involves creativity and collaboration — similar to being a scientist. Honestly, none of this feels like work to me. By mixing up endeavors, I never feel burned out, even when I’m putting in 80 hours a week and going a dozen different directions.”

Jimenez-Chavez pours most of those hours into research that could provide links between health in space and diseases on Earth. It all started in June 2024 when he went as a fellow for NASA to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston for what was supposed to be a literature review on the effects of radiation on mitochondria.

“I was told not to expect too much,” Jimenez-Chavez says.

On his first day at JSC, he saw a whiteboard with drawings of molecular receptors, which he’d learned about in a neuroscience class at UCF. When the principal investigator, Honglu Wu, heard Jimenez-Chavez offer thoughts about what might be missing from the diagrams, he invited Jimenez-Chavez to join the research team in the Radiation Biophysics Lab, where they study the impact of space travel on astronauts at the cellular level.

“There are complications when forces in space push bodily fluids around,” Jimenez-Chavez says. “When the balance of human cells is compromised, it can cause disruptions with our immunities. The last thing NASA wants to do is send people to Mars and then find out they developed cancer as a consequence. Immune health is one of the many factors NASA has to consider.”

Recognizing a potential parallel with cancer research, Wu and Jimenez-Chavez met with immunologists at the MD Anderson Cancer Center to discuss their findings. This led to a co-authorship with researchers from the institute and, later, an audience with Nobel Laureate James Allison to explain their findings.

“A highlight of my life,” says Jimenez-Chavez. “[Allison] was fascinated because we’re attempting to go as far upstream as possible in finding root causes of cancer, all the way to the mitochondria that power the cells. Who knows? Maybe this could help revolutionize cancer treatment. Any breakthrough would be the result of another two-way bridge between the benefits of space research and medical care for people on Earth.”

This summer, Jimenez-Chavez is bringing what he learned at Johnson Space Center to Kennedy Space Center where actual astronauts will be part of the research. He’s also continuing a project with Melanie Coathup at UCF’s College of Medicine “to increase my knowledge.” Their study explores the effects of cosmic radiation on bones and the possibility that energy in space can break DNA coding.

Jimenez-Chavez admits that sometimes he’s so immersed in science, medicine and NASA that he forgets to take a step back and realize what he’s doing.

“I’m living a dream,” he says before correcting himself. “Actually, I’m living a lot of dreams.”

In June, Jimenez-Chavez will speak to a group of ambitious 18-25-year-olds living in Peru.

“Space biology in that part of Peru isn’t even a dream,” Jimenez-Chavez says. “It’s a fantasy.” He knows this because he’s listened to his family talk about growing up in that same region. His father lived with 11 siblings in a mud house (two other siblings died of malnutrition), yet he and his brothers studied and worked hard enough to become doctors and pharmacists. The pay in Peru was a fraction of what the professions pay in the U.S., so Jimenez-Chavez’s parents decided to immigrate to the U.S. to provide a better life for Luis, even if it meant starting over.

“Mom and dad are my superheroes. For the first 10 years of my life, we lived in an uncle’s basement while they learned English, went to pharmacy school and worked as custodians. Three other uncles lived in that house, too. One of them slept in a closet. They were all working to reestablish themselves in America as doctors. I was always surrounded with medical talk, diagrams of hearts and science textbooks. Instead of imagining characters from children’s books, I’d go to bed thinking about active galactic nuclei and supernovas.”

Jimenez-Chavez credits the master’s program at UCF for his ability to speak so easily about high-level topics, but he also points to his childhood as proof of the impact of an environment on learning — not so much the place as the people in it.

“The dreams of my uncles rubbed off on me, but mostly it was my dad,” he says. “His dream was to be a scientist at NASA and find cures for illnesses. He didn’t personally live his NASA dream, but 50% of me — Luis — is my dad’s DNA. So, whenever I’m at NASA, it’s like he’s there, too. That’s why I enjoy conversations like this — because everything I discuss is an accomplishment for my entire family.”

Officials from the consortium — designated in 2024 as the state’s official space research entity — NASA leaders, and guests participated in the signing ceremony held at KSC, marking a critical milestone in a partnership to advance research, technology development, education and communication between the spaceport and the state’s growing space industry.

“Together, academia, government, and industry are bridging the gap between ideas and real-world applications, achieving far more together than we ever could on our own.” — Alexander N. Cartwright, UCF president

“Through this agreement, NASA will benefit in new and exciting ways from our longtime partnership with the universities that make Florida shine,” says NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “As we move deeper into this golden era of space exploration, a new generation of thinkers and leaders will lead the way — thinkers and leaders like the researchers, faculty and students of the Artemis generation, whom we are pleased to work with through the consortium.“

The creation of the consortium was the result of more than a year of effort by leaders at KSC, the University of Florida, UCF, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. The agreement highlights the partnership and serves as the official start to partnering activities, with Florida now the only state with a university consortium affiliated with one of NASA’s centers.

Present at the event was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

“It was great to visit the Space Coast Jan. 8 to announce the Florida University Space Research Consortium— our state’s official space research entity. Home to a thriving aerospace industry and world-class higher education institutions, Florida is the ideal place to launch this initiative,” DeSantis says. “We are primed to lead the nation in developing a blueprint for state-space partnerships into the future.”

The mission of the consortium is to foster a symbiotic relationship between NASA KSC and Florida’s universities to drive innovation in space exploration, research, and technology through academic collaboration, joint projects, and workforce development.

“The launch of the Florida University Space Research Consortium is a significant milestone for our state’s aerospace sector, bringing together our world-class education system with cutting edge research and development,” says Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez. “This consortium will undoubtedly further strengthen and deepen Florida’s position as the leader in the global aerospace economy.”

The memorandum of understanding marks the dawn of a new era of cooperation between the Florida spaceport and the state’s university system, starting with the three charter universities with plans to expand to other state universities interested in participating. The push to enhance research and technological collaboration with universities has been a priority at NASA for years and has seen success at other NASA centers across the country.

While KSC becomes the first NASA center affiliated with a university consortium, recently NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley partnered with University of California, Berkeley, on development of the Berkeley Space Center at NASA Research Park, located at Ames. Still in development, the project is envisioned as a 36-acre discovery and innovation hub to include educational spaces, labs, offices, student housing, and a new conference center. More recently, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston teamed up with Texas A&M University to break ground on a building that will become a testing laboratory for apparatuses in development for NASA’s moon to Mars plans. In attendance for the groundbreaking was KSC Director Janet Petro, who was one of the signatories on the agreement.

“This agreement is a shining example of what it looks like when we link arms and create a space for the whole to be greater than all our parts,” Petro says. “This symbiotic partnership makes way for collaborative research opportunities and increased exposure to advanced technology, significantly enhancing NASA’s research output in fields such as aerospace engineering, materials science, robotics and environmental science, all of which are necessary for long-term human exploration as we learn to live and work deeper into space than ever before.”

Toon, a School of Teacher Education alumna who works for NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) at Kennedy Space Center, is using her teaching experience to inspire students and teachers to shoot for the stars. The EGS program is helping lay the foundation for humanity’s return to the moon. EGS develops and operates the ground systems and facilities needed to process and launch rockets and spacecraft for NASA’s Artemis missions. Those involved in the project also play a primary role in assembly, launch, and recovery of rockets and spacecraft.

A large part of Toon’s role within EGS is to support outreach and engagement with local schools and communities. She’s been able to utilize her teaching degree and experience to help educate teachers and students on what EGS is doing, how they as the Artemis Generation can become involved, and what different career paths are available at NASA.

Toon’s journey began at age 4 with a love for teaching and space exploration.

“I remember being in daycare, trying to read a book about stars, and thinking it would be so cool to see space,” she says. “I didn’t think I wanted to be an astronaut, but I realized teachers could also go to space, and I loved my teachers. I decided I was going to be a teacher — maybe I’ll go into space one day, maybe not, but that’s what vividly shaped my path into going and pursuing a degree in education.”

While Toon initially pursued elementary education, her passion for learning and teaching evolved into a role at NASA. She now uses her skills to communicate the complexities of space exploration and engage with the students. She focuses on outreach and helping students understand the wide range of opportunities at NASA.

“When I visit schools, I ask students to raise their hand if they love math, and then if they hate it, I tell them NASA isn’t just for engineers or astronauts,” Toon says. “It’s for anyone with a passion, whether it’s art or reading or writing. Everyone has a role in exploration.”

Her teaching background has also equipped her with different skills that have been useful in her current role.

“Lesson planning and curriculum development taught me to plan with the end in mind,” Toon says. “That has helped me when creating measurable milestones and problem-solving.”

She also has fun engaging with the students with whom she interacts as she teaches them new things about space.

“Explaining to students how astronauts go potty in space — that’s always a super fun activity,” she says.

Toon highlighted several resources available for educators and students interested in space exploration. These include NASA’s STEM Engagement portal, interactive games and internships. Programs like Next Gen STEM provide practical tools and lesson plans for classroom use, while internship opportunities at NASA offer hands-on experience for aspiring professionals.

While Toon no longer dreams of going to space herself, her work continues to leave an undeniable mark.

“The Artemis missions are about creating a long-term impact, not just for the U.S., but for all of humanity,” she says.  “I get to help tell our story and help leave that legacy.”

The robot rovers won’t be going into space — but they will face the next best challenge: to build a berm structure which would be useful to NASA’s Artemis program for navigating during lunar landings and launches, shading cryogenic propellant tank farms, providing radiation protection around a nuclear power plant and other mission-critical uses.

NASA created the Lunabotics Challenge in support of the Artemis program. UCF’s Florida Space Institute and its Exolith Lab will host the first round, sponsored by Caterpillar Inc., on May 11-14. The top 10 teams will advance to the demonstrations phase of the competition at the Kennedy Space Center May 15-17.

ɫ����, students will be testing and showcasing their rovers in the same regolith bin that NASA, the European Space Agency and many companies use to evaluate and improve new equipment and technologies before launching them into space. Leaders in key industries that are important to Florida’s and the region’s workforce will serve as judges.

“Lunabotics gives students from throughout the United States an unrivaled opportunity to apply their knowledge of robotics and space to NASA’s design and construction processes,” says Winston Schoenfeld, UCF interim vice president for research. “The future of our space and many other high-tech industries depends on preparing a talented workforce that can innovate and work in highly collaborative team environments.”

Each team of college students has spent months designing and building a robot rover to NASA specifications that, during this challenge, will autonomously navigate a lunar-simulated arena and excavate regolith. They will compete two teams at a time per round, being given a set amount of time to collect regolith from the construction zone and dump it into a berm zone. Teams will be judged on a variety of factors, chiefly, the size of the berm they are able to build up in the regolith material with the rover.

The top 10 teams then travel to Kennedy Space Center for the culminating event, to demonstrate the operation of their functional tele-operated or autonomous robot to complete the lunar construction tasks. Students benefit from participating and having their work evaluated by NASA and private sector engineers, technicians and educators. NASA benefits by assessing student designs and data the same way it does for its own designs, encouraging innovation in student designs and identifying clever solutions to the many challenges inherent in future Artemis missions.

“NASA’s Artemis program is our plan to return humanity to the surface of the moon in a way that is sustainable over the long term.  And the task of robotically building berm structures will be important for preparation and support of crewed lunar missions.  These competing teams are not only building critical engineering skills that will assist their future careers, but they are literally helping NASA prepare for our future Artemis missions,” says NASA Software Developer & In-Situ Resource Specialization (ISRU) Researcher Kurt Leucht.

Founded to help fuel talent for the nearby space industry, UCF continues to build its reputation as SpaceU. NASA, with more than 50 years of research support from UCF, has advanced its Artemis program with the goal of establishing a sustainable human presence on the moon and preparing for missions to Mars. Prominent UCF space researchers are actively engaged in multiple collaborations with NASA — particularly within the Artemis program — and 29% of Kennedy Space Center employees are UCF alums.

“Students are taking on a challenge that also faces all of our top space agencies and companies — how can we design and build an autonomous vehicle that can reliably perform tasks on the surface of the moon?” says Julie Brisset, interim director ɫ����’s Florida Space Institute. “The hands-on experience is invaluable for students and will help set them up for success on their campuses and in their future careers.”

Soil simulants used in the Lunabotics Challenge at UCF are created from crushed minerals. Once produced by UCF’s Exolith Lab, this regolith is now manufactured by a successful spinoff company, Space Resource Technologies. Other sponsors include Allen & Company, Lunar Outpost, Riegl USA and Venturi Astrolab.

As for the UCF Team, comprised of nine mechanical engineering and computer science students, learning how to work together as a team was as worthwhile an output as the lunar robot itself.

“Our ‘move fast and break things’ mindset has led to lots of creativity flowing to solve problems that came up with the design,” says Lee Marshall, who serves as team lead for UCF.

Their biggest challenge was creating a custom mechanical solution from scratch for the controls, according to Marshall. For the robot rover, materials came from 3D printers, an Xbox Connect being used as a camera and depth sensor, and other materials found in the Robotics Club lab.

“From observing the team, you can see their dedication, innate drive and determination to make it through the qualifying event,” says Crystal Maraj, faculty advisor for the UCF Robotics Club and an assistant professor with the Institute for Simulation and Training. “It takes a lot of time and effort, and I applaud these students for their success to iterate the design and utility of the robot for competition.”

Members of the public will be able to watch the competition rounds of the Lunabotics Challenge on the Florida Space Institute’s YouTube Channel. The Lunabotics .

“Knights, it’s no wonder that since the beginning, NASA has relied on UCF to help in our moonshots,” Nelson told engineering, computer science and optics graduates during his commencement address. “And Knights, it’s no wonder that it’s going to be a member of your generation who leaves their footprints on the red sands of Mars. So, to the Class of ‘24: you have moonshots in your DNA.

“Moonshots are big things. They’re bigger than any one of us. They’re bigger than all of us. Like Pegasus, you now have to reach for the skies— and now you can carry thunder and lightning with you.

“And you know how to aim for the moon—because this is America’s Space University. There’s no moonshot beyond your reach. So, decide what your moonshot will be — and then your launch, your liftoff, will happen right when you walk out those doors.”

UCF President Alexander N. Cartwright told Nelson, “You’re absolutely right. Our students are incredible, and they can all achieve any moonshot they set their minds to.”

UCF was founded in 1963 — and offered its first classes in 1968 — to help fuel talent to support the nearby space industry, and the university has partnered with NASA ever since, with UCF faculty and students working on about 700 NASA projects.

Many UCF space researchers and alumni are involved in the Artemis program. Planetary scientists Kerri Donaldson Hanna and Addie Dove are leading a $35 million NASA mission to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon in 2027 to explore never-before-visited volcanic domes and help inform future exploration. UCF researchers also are studying rocket propulsion, protecting astronauts and their equipment from harmful space dust, and the health impacts of space travel on astronauts.

Twenty-nine percent of Kennedy Space Center employees are UCF alumni. And UCF repeatedly ranks as the No. 1 provider of graduates to the aerospace and defense industry, according to Aviation Week Network.

“In 1968, as Apollo 7 propelled Americans into space — and later, through Apollo 11, to land on the Moon — UCF began to educate and inspire a new generation of leaders: the Apollo generation,” Nelson said. “And I ask you today to give your imagination to help us achieve another dream — now to return humanity to the moon and then to look onward to Mars and beyond.”

Nelson has served as NASA’s 14^th administrator for three years. A fifth-generation Floridian, he previously represented the state as a U.S. senator for 18 years and a congressman for 12 years. UCF awarded Nelson the Exemplary Public Service Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, recognizing his longtime service in government.

“I have the honor of serving a storied organization that makes history — that makes the impossible possible,” Nelson told graduates, citing the James Webb Space Telescope a million miles away, always on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun. “At NASA, we know a thing or two about moonshots. Because we’re going back (to the moon) after a half-century. This time, we’re going to learn to live, to experiment on the lunar surface — to invent, to create in order for us not just to go the moon, but to go further — to go to Mars and beyond.

“We’re expanding upon the vision of President John Kennedy that he laid forth in 1961 … He challenged our country to unite behind a bold endeavor, once thought impossible. He made America believe in moonshots. And today, moonshots are not confined to the cosmos. Moonshots are imagined, developed and achieved here on Earth — by people like you.”

In 1986, Nelson trained and flew with the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia for mission STS-61C, the 24th flight of the Space Shuttle. While orbiting Earth 98 times over six days, Nelson conducted 12 medical experiments, including the first American stress test in space on a treadmill and a cancer research experiment sponsored by university researchers.

“Kennedy didn’t have all the answers when he dared America to go to the moon, but he had the courage to dream,” Nelson said. “So, graduates, you don’t need all the answers on this special day. What you need today is to have the confidence and trust to decide what is your moonshot. Confidence that you will do what is hard and trust that what you can achieve is great. Confidence and trust that you will be a part of something larger than any one person. So, what’s your moonshot?”

UCF awarded about 9,800 degrees this weekend, including nearly 3,000 in STEM fields and about 1,400 in engineering and computer science.